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Chapter 9: Ecstasy Is Freedom, Ecstasy Is Rebellion

Once I used to live in a town where the police commissioner was my friend; we were friends from our university student days. He used to come to me, and he would say, “I am so miserable. Help me to come out of it.” I would say, “You talk about coming out of it, but I don’t see that you really want to come out of it. In the first place, why have you chosen to work in this police department? You must be miserable, and you want others also to be miserable.”

One day I asked three of my disciples to go around the town and dance in different parts of the town and be happy. They said, “For what?” I said, “Simply go.” Within one hour, of course, they were caught by the police. I called the police commissioner; I said, “Why have you caught these people?” He said, “These people seem to be mad.” I asked him, “Have they done anything wrong? Have they harmed anybody?” He said, “No, nothing. Really, they have not done anything wrong.” “Then why have you caught them?” He said, “But they were dancing on the streets! And they were laughing.” “But if they have not done anything harmful to anybody, why should you interfere? Why should you come in? They have not attacked anybody, they have not entered anybody’s territory. They were just dancing. Innocent people, laughing.” He said, “You are right, but it is dangerous.” “Why is it dangerous? To be happy is dangerous? To be ecstatic is dangerous?” He got the point; he immediately released them. He came running to me; he said, “You may be right. I cannot allow myself to be happy - and I cannot allow anybody else to be happy.”

These are your politicians, these are your police commissioners, these are your magistrates, your juries, your leaders, your so-called saints, your priests, your popes - these are the people. They all have a great investment in your misery; they depend on your misery. If you are miserable they are happy.

Only a miserable person will go to the temple to pray. A happy person will go to a temple for what? A happy person is so happy that he feels God everywhere. That’s what happiness is all about. He’s so ecstatically in love with existence that wherever he looks he finds God. Everywhere is his temple. And wherever he bows down, suddenly he finds God’s feet, nothing else. His awe, his reverence, need not be so narrow that he has to go to a Hindu temple or a Christian church. That is silly; that is meaningless.

Only miserable people who cannot see God, who cannot see God in a blooming flower, who cannot see God in a singing bird, who cannot see God in a psychedelic rainbow, who cannot see God in the floating clouds, who cannot see God in the rivers and in the ocean, who cannot see God in the beautiful eyes of a child, they go to the church, they go to the mosque, they go to the temple, they go to the priest, and they ask, “Where is God? Please show us.”